


Performing to Strangers

by Quentanilien



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quentanilien/pseuds/Quentanilien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzie is invited to a second dinner at Catherine de Bourgh's house, where she is coerced into playing tennis in front of everyone. Darcy comes in all his state to watch her play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Performing to Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the piano-playing scene in Pride & Prejudice, which is one of my favorite conversations Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy have, so I wanted to find a way to incorporate it into LBD. I tried to make it fit into canon as seamlessly as possible, so it's supposed to be the Friday after episode 56, "A New Buddy," and possibly the same day Lizzie filmed the Q&A video with Fitz.

Much to Lizzie’s chagrin, she received another dinner invitation from Catherine de Bourgh mere days after dining at her house for the first time. And here she had been hoping for a Darcy-free weekend. Not to mention that she’d have to eat yet another meal while being watched by a hairless snaggle-toothed dog.

Ricky Collins had relayed the invitation to her, in his typical officious manner, and she had been dumb enough to try to get out of it while he was still in the room instead of waiting until she and Charlotte were alone. Charlotte would have gotten her out of it somehow; she always had her back. At least, she used to. These days she was caught in the middle of making her boss (and her boss’s boss) happy and sparing her best friend some discomfort. Lizzie supposed she couldn’t blame her for which side she’d been tipping towards this week.

In any case, it was her own fault. She should have known that the first mention of reluctance to accept the invitation would send Ricky into full panic mode, emphasizing how great an honor it was for her to receive another invitation so soon, and how terribly offended Ms. de Bourgh would be if she refused.

Charlotte calmed him down as quickly as she could. “Mr. Collins, what Lizzie means is that she’s surprised Ms. de Bourgh would want to see her again since she’s not actually an employee at Collins and Collins, and I’m sure we have important business matters to discuss.”

Lizzie leaped on that. “Yes, exactly. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Oh Miss Bennet, your scruples are admirable, but Ms. de Bourgh made it quite clear that the invitation included you. She truly is the most hospitable of investors, and you could hardly say no to such an invitation.”

He probably said more after that, but Lizzie was too busy trying to remember if she had ever heard anyone say “scruples” outside of a classic novel to notice. She did, however, see Charlotte shoot her a meaningful glance and say, “Well then of course Lizzie will be happy to come,” before getting Ricky out the door by reminding him of an upcoming deadline.

“Happy?” Lizzie made a face. “I’d rather eat one of my mother’s green bean gelatin concoctions again. “

Charlotte looked apologetic. “This is one of those things where it’s really important to my job that you be there. I hate to make you do it again, but—”

“No, it’s okay. Anything for you.” Lizzie gave a dazzling smile. “I can’t promise my cheek muscles will hold out the whole time though. Fake smiling is a lot of work.”

“I assume Fitz will be there too, so hopefully they won’t all have to be fake smiles.”

The thought cheered Lizzie up a bit. Charlotte was a little more wary around Fitz since he was part of the team who was evaluating Collins and Collins, but she seemed to enjoy his company, and Lizzie already unreservedly considered him a friend. She still couldn’t figure out how Darcy managed to have such super-nice friends. At least his family was predictably awful. Well, at least the one member of it she’d met. Two if you counted Anniekins. And his sister Georgiana already sounded insufferable. Lizzie pictured her as the Darcybot, just with longer hair and holding a tennis racket. For half a second Lizzie wished she could meet her just so she could see the two Darcybots interacting. She couldn’t even imagine what that would look like. But who was she kidding? She could hardly stand being in the same room as one of them. Weirdly, Fitz had called her a “cool kid” and said he thought they would like each other. Doubtful.

That evening, she decided to just stick with the gray dress she’d been wearing that day, since she’d already worn her least offensive and second-least-offensive outfits at the previous dinners. She still couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that would make an outfit offensive to Catherine de Bourgh, so choosing all of them had been a shot in the dark. Luckily, Catherine seemed more focused on her personal shortcomings than her wardrobe shortcomings. She’d seemed weirdly displeased that Lizzie couldn’t play the piano. What was with everyone’s piano obsession lately? Even her viewers kept asking her that.

“Hey Charlotte?” Lizzie called from her friend’s tiny bathroom as she made last-minute adjustments to her hair. Charlotte popped her head around the corner as Lizzie turned to strike a dramatic pose. “How do I look? Offensive? Any chance I could lose you your funding?”

Charlotte laughed and shook her head. “You look fine. You know Ricky really exaggerates her expectations of people.”

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “Really? She seems pretty judgy to me.” She lapsed into her Catherine voice. “You girls and your time-wasting activities.”

Charlotte grinned sheepishly. “Okay, so Ricky _sort of_ exaggerates her expectations. Are you ready? Can’t be late or she’ll think we’re time-wasting again.”

When they arrived at Catherine’s, Ricky was already there, of course, eagerly sneaking words in whenever Catherine had to stop speaking to take a breath. Fitz had been listening to both of them with an amused look on his face, but he jumped up with a grin and a “Lizzie B.!” when he saw the girls, and he came over to give them both a hug. Darcy was sitting stiffly on the couch Fitz had just vacated, bowtie and suspenders on as usual. Lizzie felt a slight twinge of disappointment that he was once again not wearing the newsie hat. She had only seen him wearing it the one time, but it just fit in so perfectly with his overall pretentiousness that she always pictured him in it. Not that she pictured him often. Ugh. Insufferable douchebag.

He got up to say hello to them, and she felt his eyes briefly sweep over her. His expression didn’t change from his typical neutral not-a-smile/not-a-frown, but she suddenly felt very judged. Of course he would find her outfit offensive even if Catherine didn’t. There was no winning with these people.

It turned out dinner wasn’t even being served until 8 (of course Catherine kept a chef and some sort of server that Lizzie liked to call a butler in her head), so they had over an hour to kill before she could relax her face from smiling and shovel food into it instead. Fortunately, she found herself off to the side laughing with Fitz while Catherine talked to everyone else. They got on the subject of hobbies somehow and she found herself regaling Fitz with stories of her hilariously unsuccessful attempts to find a sport she was decent at in high school.

“…so I finally settled on tennis, partly because I was better at it than anything else, but mostly because it didn’t involve a lot of running and shoving and teamwork.”

Fitz’s face assumed a comically injured expression. “You don’t like working with other people?”

Lizzie laughed. “No, no, I like other people just fine, it’s just with tennis, no one’s relying on you to not let them down. Like, if I lost, nobody was going to blame me but myself.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “And trust me, I lost _a lot_.”

Their laughter drew the attention of the others and Catherine was demanding to know what they were talking about. Darcy was looking at her again, this time with his eyebrows slightly furrowed as though he was deep in thought. Probably thinking how a truly accomplished woman would never be so uncompetitive. As if he knew anything about her. She was plenty competitive, just not about sports. But things like schoolwork, work, even dancing video games…totally different story.

“What are you two talking about over there? What is Elizabeth telling you? Let me hear it,” Catherine was saying.

Fitz smiled easily. “Lizzie was just telling me how she used to play tennis.”

“Oh yes, she informed me she hasn’t practiced in years.” Catherine looked over her glasses at Lizzie particularly severely. “Which reminds me, I have a tennis court behind the garden. Why don’t we all go out and you two can play a little match to entertain us before dinner.”

Lizzie’s eyes widened in panic. She looked at Fitz helplessly. “Uh…you play tennis?”

Fitz looked completely unperturbed. Seriously, nothing fazed this guy. “I’ve played a little with Gigi over the years.”

Catherine was already getting up and leading everyone out the door onto the patio as Lizzie was trying to stammer out an excuse. “Um, I’m not really dressed for tennis….”

Fitz gave her an apologetic smile and jumped up to follow everyone else. No help was forthcoming from that quarter. She gave one last futile glance around the room and noticed Darcy was still sitting there. He had the decency to look a little embarrassed by his aunt’s pushiness. Lizzie couldn’t help feeling a little triumphant despite the situation. At least she wasn’t the only one with mortifying relatives. She hurried out the door before Darcy could offer her a hand up or some other pitying gesture.

As she walked through the garden, which she grudgingly admitted to herself was quite lovely, she felt grateful she’d decided on ballet flats instead of heels tonight. Not that they’d help her much. Why oh why did her one applicable “life skill” have to be shared by Georgiana Darcy, the nationally ranked tennis star?

Fitz was already bouncing a ball on his tennis racket by the time she got there, spinning it in his hand every time the ball was up in the air. Lizzie rolled her eyes. Show off. Everyone else settled in some nearby lawn chairs while Lizzie took a racket and headed to her side of the court. She brushed her ponytail behind her shoulder and crouched down slightly, waiting for Fitz’s serve. She wanted to warn him how bad she was going to be, but didn’t want everyone else to hear her admit to that.

“Lizzie B., are you ready?” Fitz asked confidently.

Lizzie smiled and nodded. “As I’ll ever be,” she muttered under her breath. As Fitz began his serve, she keenly felt everyone’s eyes on her.

He hit it perfectly, more gently than she had expected, but hard enough that it didn’t look like he was taking it easy on her. She returned it easily, and as the ball went back and forth between them, she realized she wasn’t as rusty as she’d thought. Although she suspected Fitz _was_ taking it a little easy on her. After a few minutes, she missed a return, and as she went to fetch the ball she sneaked a glance at the observers. Catherine had initially been watching in silent disapproval, Lizzie imagined, but she seemed to have grown bored already and was talking to the others once again.

She eventually managed to relax a little. Fitz won the first game and it was her turn to serve. She felt eyes on her once again and she glanced to her left to see that Darcy had extricated himself from his aunt’s endless conversation and was now standing just on the other side of the fence watching them, arms crossed over his chest.

Lizzie smiled grimly, tossed the ball in the air, and managed to bring it smashing through Fitz’s side before he could return it. “Nice one, Lizzie B.!” he shouted, turning to chase the ball down.

She felt a little smug about that serve. “Are you trying to scare me, Darcy, walking over so deliberately to watch us?” Fitz tossed the ball to her and she prepared to serve again. “It’s not going to work, even though your sister _does_ play so well. My courage always rises every time you attempt to intimidate me.” She grinned at Fitz before serving the ball. He returned it this time, and they settled back into a comfortable volley.

“I know you don’t really think that,” she heard Darcy answer, not a hint of a smile in his voice. She knew he was a robot and all, but didn’t he at least have the capacity to appreciate a joke every once in a while? “I’ve known you long enough to observe that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.”

Fitz snuck a ball past her again, but Lizzie was too busy laughing to care. “Your friend apparently doesn’t want you to believe anything I say,” she said to Fitz, who was looking oddly delighted with this entire conversation. “I’m so unlucky to run into someone who knew me back home, when here I was trying to pass myself off better here. Darcy, are you sure it’s such a good idea to bring this up? I could say some things about you that would shock Fitz.”

She glanced over at Darcy again. One side of his lips were quirked up into what probably wouldn’t pass for a smile on a normal person, but which on him managed to make his whole face look different. “I’m not afraid of you,” he said.

Lizzie raised her eyebrows challengingly. Fitz was laughing. “That’s right, Lizzie, you never finished telling me what he did at that wedding when you met him. Something about fake-texting in a corner all night? But he did dance with a girl! Good job, my man!”

Lizzie tossed the ball up to serve again. “Oh, prepare yourself, it gets worse. The only reason he danced that _one dance_ was because he caught the garter. _Accidentally_. And he was forced to dance with the girl who caught the bouquet.” She cheerfully omitted adding that the girl was her. Better not to relive the most awkward dance ever. “Also accidentally,” she added as an afterthought, wanting to make sure Darcy knew she had been just as reluctant to dance with him as he had been with her. “And there were a lot of girls at that wedding without dates who probably would have been really happy to dance. You can’t deny that, Darcy.”

“I…didn’t know anyone at the time other than Bing and Caroline.”

That had been Fitz’s exact excuse when she first told him. “And it’s really hard to meet people at a wedding,” she replied sarcastically.

Darcy sounded a little uncomfortable. Good. “Perhaps…I should have made more of an effort, but I find it difficult to introduce myself to strangers.”

Lizzie continued talking straight to Fitz as they volleyed the tennis ball. “Should we ask him why? Why a grown man, a successful businessman, finds it difficult to introduce himself to strangers?”

“Sometimes I think it’s because he just doesn’t want to trouble himself,” Fitz teased.

“I certainly do not have the talent some people possess of conversing easily with people I’ve never met before. I find small talk….” He seemed momentarily at a loss for words. “…difficult.”

Just as he said it, the ball flew past Lizzie in easy range, but to her annoyance, she missed it. Instead of going to get the ball, she paused and made eye contact with Darcy, gesturing with her racket to emphasize her point. “I’m not nearly as good at tennis as other people I’ve seen. I’m not as coordinated, not as quick. But I’ve always known it’s my own fault I’m not better at it, because I never took the time to practice as much as I could have.” She was proud of that metaphor. Was it passive-aggressive to love speaking in metaphors? Because she kind of did that a lot. In this case, she didn’t really care. Darcy deserved it.

He smiled his strange Darcy-smile again. “You are perfectly right. You’ve employed your time much better. No one who watches you play could think anything wanting.”

Lizzie blinked in surprise. Was he making fun of her? Had he not just watched her lose yet another game to Fitz?

“Neither of us perform to strangers,” he added seriously, holding eye contact with her for an unusually long time for him. She’d never noticed the color of his eyes before, but they seemed to match the blue of his shirt in the fading fall sunlight. Not that the color of his stupid judgy eyes mattered.

Then Catherine was interrupting again, demanding to know what they were talking about. Just before Lizzie turned away to continue playing, she thought she saw Darcy roll his eyes in exasperation. Lizzie stifled a little private smile. There was just something so satisfying in his apparent disdain for his aunt.

Despite the fact that neither of them had answered, Catherine joined Darcy by the fence, and now Lizzie had two pairs of judging eyes on her. True to her word, she actually did feel braver despite the intimidation attempt, and in the next few minutes she managed to beat Fitz in one game.

Catherine nodded in a way that Lizzie supposed must pass for approval, then said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Elizabeth, you wouldn’t be half bad if you practiced more. You have very good technique. But not everyone can have Georgiana’s dedication, I suppose. Such a pity.” Lizzie tried her best to summon a bright smile as Catherine peered critically over her glasses at her once again, before scratching Anniekins on the head and turning to demand everyone return to the house for dinner.

Lizzie breathed a sigh of relief as Fitz came over to mock-seriously shake her hand over the net. “We didn’t get to play a full set, Lizzie B., so we’ll just call that a tie,” he said with a wink.

Lizzie smiled. “Fair enough. I was just getting warmed up, you know.” She elbowed him playfully in the side as they put their rackets away. “I totally would have won the set.”

“Keep telling yourself that, my friend. I know you’re just professing opinions which aren’t your own.” He grinned cheekily as he left the court, leaving her with her mouth half open as she tried to think of a retort. She snapped it shut when she noticed Darcy was still there, and he was still looking at her. _Like a traffic accident_ , she thought grimly.

As she left the court and started walking back, he fell into step beside her. He’d just professed he disliked small talk, and she wasn’t about to start any anyway, so they walked in awkward silence. At one point, his arm brushed against hers accidentally, and he jerked away like she’d electrocuted him. _Why did he even bother waiting for me if I disgust him so much?_ she thought sourly. His earlier words popped into her head. _Neither of us perform to strangers_. Her initial reaction had been resentment at him lumping the two of them into a category together, but now she wondered what he’d meant by it. Was he actually trying to equate his constant aloofness with her reluctance to play tennis in front of everyone? Speaking to people wasn’t a performance, it was just…being a normal human being. And what was up with that weird pseudo-compliment about her (lack of) tennis skills? It was clearly a snarky put-down, but snark kind of loses its bite when you follow it up with a comparison to yourself. Maybe Darcy was just as bad at snarkiness as he was at politeness.

When they reached the patio, he held one of the French doors open for her, and she mumbled a thank you. Whatever, holding one door open didn’t make him a polite person. She caught a glimpse of her reflection as she walked past the glass doors and noticed stray wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail and were sticking out at odd angles. She hurriedly tried to pat it down before she noticed Darcy was looking at her, and she snapped her arms back to her sides immediately. She’d worked up a tiny bit of a sweat while playing tennis, and there might be some evidence under her arms. Not that she cared what he thought of her in the slightest, but there was something about his gaze that made her so annoyingly self-conscious. Like he was just waiting for her to mess up or look less than perfect, and he never had to wait for long. Meanwhile, his shirt had not one single wrinkle to console her.

He quirked an eyebrow slightly when he saw her studying him. From another room, she heard Ricky Collins loudly wondering where “Miss Bennet” had disappeared to, and with a little breath of relief she snapped her eyes away from Darcy and hurried towards the dining room before he could say anything.


End file.
